Commentary

I’m not certain how Hillary Clinton and Columbia University thought their staged video of her promoting a foreign policy course she’ll teach would be received as it was fed to the networks this week. I imagine there was some second guessing.

“Hillary Clinton’s promo for Columbia foreign policy course mercilessly mocked,” read the headline in the New York Post.

In the video, Keren Yarhi-Milo, Dean and Adlai E. Stevenson Professor of International Relations, who will co-teach the course, jokes about Hillary “running again,” while she responds that she “just got here early,” wanting to be prepared. “Prepared? I think you’re more prepared than anyone to teach this course,” Yarhi-Milo adds.

More on Hillary’s preparedness later, but first there’s more that Hillary and the folks at Columbia probably didn’t expect with the announcement.

It begins with the title of the course: “Inside the Situation Room.”  Hillary should have known that would engender memories of the 2011 field day the media had when the photo of her in the White House Situation Room during the raid on Bin Laden’s compound was released.

There she was, the lone woman around the table of President Obama’s cabinet members and advisors, with her hand over her mouth.  The New York Times wondered, was she “Shocked? Awed? Dismayed?”

The Washington Post even went to the extent of publishing a photo of Hillary outlined in its coverage.

“There are lots of serious faces in the photo, but of particular note is Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who has one hand over her mouth,” reported NPR.

When asked about the photo, Hillary commented, “I am somewhat sheepishly concerned that it was my preventing one of my early spring allergic coughs. So, I have no great meaning whatsoever.”

Looking closely, you know that wasn’t true.

“At the time, it sort of felt like she had robbed the country of a legendary – and legendarily human – reaction to an historic event,” wrote John Hudson in The Atlantic, obviously a Clinton supporter.

During her later appearance on NBC with former President Obama, he claimed the photo was taken right when one of the helicopters was having a problem. “I remember Hillary putting her hand over her mouth at the point,” he confidently stated.  I found that to be quite convenient for Hillary.

So why did she say otherwise last year,” wrote Hudson. “It’s hard to say for sure.  But one might suspect she wanted to avoid appearing weak, and the individual with the most visible appearance of concern in the photograph.”

“You could also add that Clinton especially made a point of selling her toughness,” he said, reminding his readers of her famous White House 3 a.m. phone call campaign commercial.

Remember that?  “It’s 3 a.m., and your children are safe and asleep,” a narrator says, “but there’s a phone in the White House, and it’s ringing.”  After we see a clip of Clinton wearing glasses, answering the phone, the narrator poses the question: “Who do you want answering the phone?”

About the Course

The Fall 2023 Semester bulletin notes “In an era increasingly defined by geopolitical competition, it is more important than ever for future policymakers to understand why and how foreign policy decisions are made.

“Students will be taught how to analyze and understand the complex interplay between individual psychology, domestic politics, public opinion, bureaucracy, the international environment, and other factors which feed into decisions about foreign policy – from crisis diplomacy to the use of force, signaling and perception, intelligence and analysis, the deployment of other instruments of statecraft and more.”

The course is by application only; priority for undergraduate applicant will be given to those applying to the five-year joint degree program with Columbia and its School of International and Public Affairs.

Hillary’s Preparedness

By now, most of you are aware of her lack of preparedness to be president of the United States.  Her response to the attack on the U.S. compound in Benghazi, that took the life of Ambassador Chris Stevens and three of our operators was shameful.

I’ll never forget her remark about it in response to Wisconsin Sen. Ron Johnson’s questioning during a Senate hearing: “What difference, at this point, does it make”

I remember, too, how she weaseled out of appearing on the Sunday news shows.  How Susan Rice drew the short straw and made those appearances, because Hillary, according to her aides, had a default policy of rejecting all Sunday requests.

Thank goodness, there was always someone who reported on her missteps along the way as a first lady, senator, and secretary of state.

“We’re going to put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business,” she foolishly said during a campaign appearance in West Virginia coal country.

Whether it was her claim on ABC News with Diane Sawyer that she and Bill left the White House “not only dead broke but in debt,” or her lame response to the question of wiping her server clean after her tenure – “What, like with a cloth or something? – the media captured it all. 

The question I have is: How will those Tik Tok social media-engrossed 19- and 20-year-olds taking her course know what to ask?  They were just children while she was involved in our foreign policy; just eight years of age during the Benghazi attack.

They were still in diapers in 2002 when she voted in favor of the Iraq War and about nine years of age when she issued her mea culpa in which she wrote: “I thought I had acted in good faith and made the best decision I could with the information I had.  But I still got I wrong. Plain and simple.”

And, not yet a teenager when she made her blundering comment about supporters of Donald Trump being “deplorable.”

I’ll conclude with a fitting thought once presented by talk show host Rush Limbaugh that is appropriate, given how Columbia, and other schools of higher learning, have become bastions of liberal thought.

He cited a student, he called Suzy Creamcheese, who borrowed $212,000 and graduated with a worthless degree in conflict resolution and is now in debt with no marketable skills. He blamed Obama and “his buddies in academe” who have “taken these young skulls full of mush and turned them into basically pizza.”

I sincerely hope students with skulls full of mush are bright enough to see through Hillary and Yarhi-Milo.

Over the years, Americans have come to recognize Hillary as nothing but a career politician with shifting views on foreign policy, depending on her audience.  More intent on breaking that imaginary glass ceiling.

May God continue to bless the United States of America.